Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Literary Food Festival

November 24, 2009

Every once in awhile, my students ask to have a little party in class--you know, to break the monotony, take a break from the stress of all the work. Mostly though (I'm not fooled even a little bit), it's because they try anything to exercise Advanced Senioritis. (My freshmen ask for parties, too. Senioritis starts quite early with some of these children.) Anyway, I have a hard time justifying having a random party, but honestly sometimes I'd like a little break too, especially with my A.P. students. Instead of a party, we have what I call a Literary Food Festival.

At the Literary Food Festival, students can bring in any food to share with the class, but they have to tie it in some way to a piece of literature. They each have to do a mini-presentation on what they brought, and why. See? We're learning about literary allusions and symbols, but deliciously. I tell them the allusion can be to any book, from children's books to pop fiction to classics. In a less creative year, we'll get lots of plates of cookies, alluding toIf You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Tasty, but not so much thinking outside the box. This year, I was quite impressed with some of the offerings:

Harry Potter--Golden SnitchCupcakesAlice in Wonderland--The cookies she ate that made her shrinkLord of the Flies (A bit of a stretch, but great effort. Had the boys been left to their own devices--had they NOT been rescued, goes the explanation, they might have resorted to cannibalism. Check out the cookies: hand-shaped, foot-shaped, tongue-shaped, kidney-shaped, intestine-shaped, etc.)

And finally, the winner for both the most creative AND grossest has no corresponding picture but is worth including by explanation. We had just finished reading Oedipus Rex, so we were served two small scoops of vanilla ice cream. On each scoop was one chocolate-covered raisin, representing Oedipus' eyes. And over the top? Ooey-gooey strawberry syrup. Get it? Oedipus' eyes after he plucked them out with his wife's brooch!